Public parks need constant renewal

The public park was one of the great inventions of the nineteenth century, along with the public library and the public wash house. But all institutions need to be renewed. The tastes and preferences of sedentary car-owners with private gardens are not the same as those of hourly-paid labourers who worked 6 days/week and lived in small hovels with no space for plants. We therefore needs to find ways of adapting public parks to the needs of our own time and one way of doing this is to draw in the time, energy and resources of the local community. Citizens can volunteer their time and money to enhance their enjoyment of public open spaces.